TICKLER. His Lordship owes a debt of endless gratitude to the press. Not that the gentlemen of the press flatter him on the score of talents-for with one voice they unanimously and harmoniously proclaim him the weakest Chancellor that ever got his head into Exchequer. NORTH. Yet in the Owl they see a Phoenix. TICKLER. And as if they were all knaves themselves, lift up their hands in admiration at sight of an honest man. NORTH. Your severity, Tickler, is unjust; yet the editors, who have joined in that senseless cry, have indeed fairly subjected themselves to such imputation. There is not a more contemptible term in the language, in its vulgar colloquial misuse, than the term-honest; for it denotes a stupid man with a fat face-low brow-heavy eyes-lips that seem rather to have been afterwards sewed on to the mouth than an original feature-chubby cheeks -double chin large ears-and voice SHEPHERD. "Timmer-tuned-tempered by the beetle." But ye dinna mean to say that's a pictur' o' Lord Althropp? man. NORTH. No I do not. I know better what is due to a nobleman and a gentleBut I do mean to say that some such sort of application of the term "honest" has been unconsciously made in the case of his Lordship-to his political character-by many of his admirers. They extol his good nature. SHEPHERD. In the Forest a gude-natured man means a quate, useless boddy, henpeck'd at hame, and cheated abroad, and for whom every excuse is made when he's seen no verra weel cled at kirk or market, on the grun' o' his wife's no bein' contented wi' wearin' the breeks, unless she gets haud o' the best pair, in which she sits in velvet. That's a gude-natured man in the Forest, but he may be a different character in the House o' Commons, mair especially when the Leader there, wi' a seat o' coorse in the Cabinet, and, to croon a', Chancellor o' the Exchequer ! NORTH. In Smithfield his Lordship's character is without a stain. But, to speak plainly, as a Minister of the Crown, he is the most dishonest that ever received, returned, reaccepted, and retained the seals of office. The maist dishonest! SHEPHERD. NORTH. Yes! Steeped to the eyes in dishonour-yet all the while superstitiously believing himself "the noblest work of God." SHEPHERD. Tak time to cool, sir. Though I canna say your face is ony way distorted-which it aye is when you're in a passion-nor that your vice trummles-which it aye does when about to be left to yoursell-yet your words are viciously cuttin'-and the sharper the edge because a' the while you're sheerin' him doon, you're as cool, calm, and collecked in your manner as a cucumber. NORTH. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is often called candid, for stammering out the most blundering admissions to crafty querists, cunningly ensnaring him to commit himself on the most important points, which he, good easy man, has not the sense to think points of any importance at all-mumbling "Yes," when, in common prudence, to say nothing of pride, it should have been "No." SHEPHERD. And "No," when it should hae been "Yes." Eh? NORTH. He afterwards sees his errors, that is when he is insultingly told of them, and then he again falls back on his character for candour, and frankly, that is foolishly, confesses that he had said more than he meant, or the reverse of what he meant-and the crafty, having so far obtained their object as to make him ridiculous, and consequently powerless, cry hear! hear! hear! and the morning papers are next day filled with honest eulogiums on honest Lord Althorp, who looks next evening in his place as well pleased as a fozey turnip after a shower. SHEPHERD. You'll please me, sir, by mentionin' shortly a few dizzen instances o' his dishonesty. NORTH. I could mention five hundred-but "Lo! in the lake soft burns the star of eve, And the night-hawk hath warn'd your guests to leave, Ae dizzen. SHEPHERD. NORTH. What has the entire system of the Whig Government been from first to last, but a complicated and ravelled web of falsehood? Almost every clause in the Reform Bill, as it now stands, enacted a measure, which every man in power, (Lord Grey excepted, and Lord Durham, when Mr Lambton,) who could wag a tongue or hold a pen, however impotently, had all their political lives resisted and scorned. The Reform we have now got they had continued for many years to denounce as revolution, in speeches, pamphlets, books, without beginning, middle, or end; and the Bill they at first proposed to bring in was founded on principles of conservatism, which almost all moderate men might have in much approved. Wellington and Peel themselves would not have objected to them, though they had too much sense to introduce, as Ministers, at such a crisis, any Reform at all. Whether they were wrong or right is not the question-the question is, were the Whigs honest men-and the answer has been given by the voice of the country, radicals and all, that they were, politically speaking, knaves-and conspicuous among them, with his enthusiasm for the tri-color, was my Lord Althorp. SHEPHERD. But will ye no alloo a man to eat in a few o' his words, sir ? NORTH. No; a very few indeed, eat in, are sufficient to choke an honest man. But the Whigs re-ate all they had ever spewed on Reform-nor seemed, James, to scunner at the half-digested gobbets. Coorse. SHEPHERD. NORTH. Does the Shepherd believe that Lord Althorp in his heart loved and admired-as he said he did-the Political Unions-composed, according to Lord Brougham, of the philosophical classes of Brummagem, and bright with the scientific splendour that holds all the great manufacturing towns of England in perpetual illumination ? Once seated in places of power, the Whigs were not slow to denounce Political Unions-which were good, they said-and constitutional for purposes of national agitation to carry the great measure, but bad and unconstitutional, they had the audacious ingratitude to declare, after Reform had established a liberal Government, for then that it was time for the Philosophical and Political Unionists to resume their aprons-and that the smith must thenceforth be contented to "stand at his anvil-thus, with open-mouth, swallowing a tailor's news." I canna be angry for lauchin'. SHEPHERD. NORTH. Place himself was degraded into a newsmonger-the very tailor who bad invited himself, at the head of a kindred deputation, to a conference with the Premier, to shew him how he should cut his cloth-with what suit he should lead-what measures adopt for the use and ornament of the body politic-while a number of Jews remained at the bottom of the stair, with bags in which to carry off the State's old clothes. SHEPHERD. You're real wutty, sir, the nicht. NORTH. But did my Lord Althorp, or any other of the time-serving, place-seeking Whigs, ever explain to the Political Unions on what principle they were either encouraged or denounced? The kind of crisis at which they were a blessing-the kind of crisis at which they became a curse? To have done that even slovenly would have required an abler and an honester man. But his ability and his honesty were on a par, and far below par-and now stand at zero. SHEPHERD. I never saw Mr Tickler listenin' sae attentively before-and yet he's no asleep. NORTH. That no connexion could be imagined to subsist between Political Unions and Trades' Unions, is even yet, James, the Whig cry. They have fed, do feed, and will feed one another; and thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of poor men have rued, do rue, and will rue, the base arts of their betrayers, the Whigs, who, in the lust of power and place, seduced them to uplift the banners of sedition, misnamed of patriotism by tyrants who changed freemen into slaves, by first pretending to knock off from their limbs fetters that were never forged, and then grinding their very faces in the dust, and shipping some of the misguided wretches, now not only useless but dangerous, to expatriation and death. SHEPHERD. A Psalm-singing Methody or twa wha had taken and administered unlawfu' oaths, and some half-dizzen ne'er-do-weels, wha might hae been stappin' doon aboot this time frae the tredd-mill. NORTH. All the reasonings of the Liberals against Combination Laws were false, foolish, and futile, as I proved a few months ago, in a paper which the impartial press declared conclusive and unanswerable; and the severities which the Government inflicted, legal as they were, were shocking to the sense of justice, seeing that they came from the hands of men who had selfishly laboured to spread wide the delusion under which those poor ignorant creatures sinned and suffered. SHEPHERD. Was na Lord Melbourne then Home-Minister? NORTH. He was, and the more shame to him; but my honest Lord Althorp had been a far more flaming reformer than he, and should have shewn some bowels of compassion to the poor, who, I fear, are now the greatest part of the people. Such cruelties-tender mercies according to the Whig creed -soon cease to be remembered by the rich and noble-for though the revengeful Whigs have long memories for the slightest injuries done to themselves, the best among them have memories even shorter than their wits for the sufferings of others, and, with all their cant and slang about secondary punishments, prefer them to the capital, because, barba rous as they often are, the nation does not shudder at their infliction"out of sight out of mind," and hard-hearted philanthropists can thus transport for life as many wretches as they choose; nor have they left to themselves even the privilege of remission, so that hundreds are now annually separated for ever from all they hold dear, for crimes which used justly and humanely to be punished and expiated, and perhaps repented, by a year's imprisonment. SHEPHERD. You're expawtiatin' ower a wide field. I wuss you wou'd be mair personal on Lord Althropp. NORTH. I am never personal. I have said enough to shew you, my dear James, that that Statesman cannot be honest, who leads the House of Commons as a Member of the Cabinet of such a Government. SHEPHERD. Then they're a' dishonest thegether, and why single out his Lordship? NORTH. I never singled him out. I see him singled out to my hand as the only man among them who deserves the epithet, honest; and am, therefore, to presume that there is something peculiar in his character and conduct, distinguishing him from all the Ministers with whom he acts in concertand pray, will you, who have a fertile fancy, favour me, who am a matterof-fact man, with a conjecture what that peculiarity may be, made plausi ble by "a round unvarnished tale" of one honest deed he has performed, or one honest word he has uttered, since he began to draw his salary? SHEPHERD. That's no fair-for he may hae dune and said a thousan', though I never happen'd to hear o' ane. NORTH. In not one instance, regarding taxation, has he acted a plain, open, straightforward, bold, and intelligent part. Either he has never once happened to know what he intended to do, or never once chosen unequivocally to declare it. Irresolution is bad enough—but equivocation is insufferable; and our Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Equivocator of the Age. There are the Taxes on Knowledge, as they are called-videlicet, newspaper stamps. Did he promise to modify, or reduce, or take them off entirely, or did he not? That the Equivocator hummed and hawed, and was unintelligible, I grant; but, as usual, he said enough to commit himself with the venders of that most useful of all commodities, knowledge; and it was mortifying, humiliating to them to find that they had been cajoled and deceived by Honesty personified. But that was a trifle-for no honest man could belong to the present Ministry after the prosecution of the True Sun, and pride himself at the same time on being not only a friend, but a champion of the press. "Might not a Government be justified in prosecuting for sedition the editor of a newspaper whose offence was the same that had been committed by a Peer and a Commoner in their places in Parliament ?" Some such question was put lately to the Lord Chancellor by the Attorney-General, and the answer was "No!" The wily Attorney was outwitted by the bold Chancellor. In the well-known circumstances of the case he thought he had his Lordship on the hip; but the stalwart man of the people (alas! alas!) flung the rejected of Dudley, and the accepted of Edinburgh, (we are a proud people, the Scotch,) across his knee, and the head of "plain John Campbell" rebounded a yard from the sod. SHEPHERD. I'm amazed, and yet I hae nae idea-no the least in the warld—o' what you're speaking aboot. Gang on. NORTH. Baron Smith is one of the best beloved men in all Ireland. The Protestants adore him That's wrang. SHEPHERD. They should leave that to the Catholics. NORTH. All the virtuous Catholics regard him as their friend; but O'Connell hates and fears him, and sought to sacrifice the character of the stainless sage on the altar of his unfeeling ambition. Ambition's no the word. SHEPHERD. NORTH. It is not. Honest Lord Althorp good-naturedly joined the conspiracy against the venerable patriarch, and candidly instigated a reformed House of Commons to drive him with disgrace from the Bench. Mainly by his influence-for he is all in all in that high-minded assembly-a vote was passed for that useful, honourable, and upright purpose; and candid, conciliating, conscientious, high-minded, and warm-hearted, true English nobleman, Lord Althorp, looked at the House with a blandness of physiognomy which she must have been either more or less than human to resist, and received from her in return one of her most subduing and subservient smiles. But in this instance, his Lordship had prevailed over the virtue of the House at what is called a weak moment for a few nights after she rejected his addresses, and left him in the lurch, for one who was not troubling his head about her-the self-same aged gentleman whom she had meditated to unwig-verging on three-score and ten-even Baron Smith-but though he treated her courteously, he declined having any thing to do with her so she again returned to the embraces of the grazier. SHEPHERD. That was far waur than his equivocation about stamps. The ither was a trifle. NORTH. His behaviour, and that of all his colleagues, to Mr Sheil-a man of genius and virtue-all the world knows, was such as in private life would have shut against them the doors of all gentlemen's houses, even in Coventry. Still honest Lord Althorp not only held up his head and shewed his face, but became, on that pitiable exposure, more candid than ever, and while he apologized, gloried in his gossip. He was in reality, though not aware of it, about as dignified a personage, and in as dignified a predicament, as a dowager in a small tea-drinking town, convicted, on her own reluctant confession, of having circulated a fama clamosa against a virgin spinstress, of being nearly nine months gone with child. SHEPHERD. What'n a similie! It was rash in the dowager to say nine months, for had she said sax, the calumniated lassie would hae had to wait three afore she cu'd in ony way get a safe delivery-either o' the charge or the child. Wha was she? and what ca' they the sma' tea-drinking toun ? NORTH. You know, Mr Hogg, that the sin charged against Mr Sheil was that of having thought one way and spoken another, on a question deeply affecting Ireland-the Coercion Bill. In Parliament he had been, as was to be expected, one of the most eloquent and indignant denouncers of the tyrannical, and unconstitutional, and insulting, and injurious, and unnecessary injustice of that measure. SHEPHERD. Injurious injustice! Is that correck? NORTH. Quite correct in grammar. Out of the House he was accused of having declared it to be all right, and that the state of Ireland demanded it. So shocked and horrified was the moral sense of honest Lord Althorp by the idea of such ultra- Irish violation of all honour and all truth, that he lost his head, and avowed his inability to conceive a punishment adequate to such an unheard-of crime. In the event of the conviction of the accused, he hinted, that if the House was not found too hot for him, he would probably be found too hot for the House. Mr Sheil seemed standing on the |